I’ve been wanting to have a blog/personal website on the fediverse for a while, something close to neocities and I was wondering if you know of some platforms.
I see a lot of people recommend WordPress but recently I just discovered Hubzilla which seems like a good option but I don’t see anyone talk too much about it.
What’s the opinion on Hubzilla? and any other ideas? thanks :)
Hubzilla is my number one daily driver (although I’m here as well). In fact, I’ve found this post on Hubzilla, forwarded by someone on Mitra, but I remembered just in time before commenting that I have a Lemmy account.
I guess the reason why hardly anyone seems to be talking about Hubzilla is that hardly anyone knows that it exists in the first place, and even fewer people know what it is and what it can do.
Let’s just say that whenever some other Fediverse server software is declared “the Swiss Army knife of the Fediverse”, then Hubzilla is the Leatherman Surge of the Fediverse by comparison. There’s just so much that you can do with it.
It has just about all the capabilities of a good blogging platform, up to and including its own WebDAV-enabled cloud file space that you can also use to upload images for your blog. Or for your webpages because, yes, Hubzilla can do that as well. In fact, the official Hubzilla website itself is a webpage on a Hubzilla channel.
In addition, it introduced nomadic identity to the wider Fediverse; or rather, an earlier incarnation of Hubzilla named Red did back in 2012. This also means that we aren’t talking about something that was cobbled together during or after the 2022 Mastodon hype, but something that’s actually older than Mastodon.
However, its learning curve is steep. For starters, that’s because it’s so powerful. It doesn’t dump features upon you; in fact, it’s very modular, and many features are actually add-ons that have to be activated. But that actually kind of adds to Hubzilla’s complexity. Besides, it isn’t and doesn’t try to be a clone of anything. It doesn’t mimic anything. It isn’t quite like anything else out there except maybe its other own family members.
At least Hubzilla probably has the best built-in help system in the Fediverse, and if that should fail, it has its own Hubzilla-based support forum.
Also, Hubzilla is very modular at hub (server) level. Not all features are available on all hubs. But there’s a way to check what optional features are available on which hub: Go to a hub that you’re interested in and add
/siteinfo/jsonto the domain. I’m not sure if that page lists installed third-party themes, though, because there certainly are third-party themes that make Hubzilla even better for blogging.As someone who just hosts a few small markdown websites on GitHub Pages, that sounds intimidating.
I would not have known about it had OP not posted & you not commented, thank you.
Thanks for that reply! That was a great explanation :)
I was worried the project was being abandoned or something but seems it’s not. I’ll definitely use that then! Hopefully more people discover it and gets more attention!
Let’s just say that whenever some other Fediverse server software is declared “the Swiss Army knife of the Fediverse”, then Hubzilla is the Leatherman Surge of the Fediverse by comparison. There’s just so much that you can do with it.
It has just about all the capabilities of a good blogging platform, up to and including its own WebDAV-enabled cloud file space that you can also use to upload images for your blog.
Sorry I don’t get it. It does blogs, correct? How is that a swiss army knife on steroids?
Some Fediverse server applications are being described as “the Swiss Army knife of the Fediverse” because they have so many features, and they cover so many use-cases. They’re advertised as the most fully-featured Fediverse server applications to ever exist. By people who have never heard of Hubzilla, or who count on everyone else never having heard of Hubzilla.
Still, Hubzilla blows them clean out of the water, feature-wise and use-case-wise, without even breaking a sweat.
It does do blogs. And it does Facebook. And it does shit-tons of stuff on top of that. And if you choose so, it can do even more shit-tons of stuff on top of these shit-tons.
Hubzilla offers you, all under one roof:
- federated microblogging/macroblogging/long-form blogging with literally all the text formatting and then some with a character limit of over 16.7 million, with as many embedded images as you want, plus post/thread titles, plus summaries, plus local blog categories
- a social networking experience like on Facebook
- moderated forums (groups) with a variable and flexible level of privacy and secrecy
- a built-in file space that supports subfolders, and that can be accessed via WebDAV
- (optionally) fully formatted and titled, non-federated long-form articles (you can link to them in federated posts)
- (optionally) webpages, formatted either in Hubzilla’s extended BBcode or in Markdown or in HTML
- (optionally) multiple wikis per channel with multple pages per wiki, formatted either in Hubzilla’s extended BBcode or in Markdown
- a federated event calendar
- a CalDAV calendar server that uses the same UI as the event calendar; events in CalDAV calendars are shown among the event announcements, too
- (optionally) a headless CardDAV addressbook server
- (optionally) OpenStreetMap integration
- (optionally) QR codes dynamically generated in messages
- the second-most-advanced permissions system in the Fediverse, well over a dozen different permissions, on three levels, with seven or eight permission settings at per-channel level
- one of the most advanced filter systems in the Fediverse with a channel-wide keyword blacklist, a channel-wide keyword whitelist, optional blacklist and whitelist per connection, an optional filter list that just hides messages behind content warnings, RegEx support and, for advanced use-cases, even its own filter syntax
- multiple independent channels/identities (like accounts on other apps) on one account/login
- nomadic identity: just about the best and most advanced identity portability in the Fediverse, even with the possibility to have one or multiple live, hot backups of your channel on other servers with near-real-time bidirectional sync that you can use just like the original if you can’t use the original
Hubzilla can be your microblogging platform.
Hubzilla can be your social networking platform.
Hubzilla can be your Fediverse blog.
Hubzilla can be your non-federating blog.
Hubzilla can be your NeoCities webpage host.
Hubzilla can be your forum.
Hubzilla can be your personal wiki.
Hubzilla can be your little cloud file storage.
Hubzilla can be the DAV server that you use to sync the addressbooks and calendars on your phone and your PC.
Etc.
And Hubzilla can be any combination of the above. Like, a website with its own forum, with its own news blog, with its own wiki, with its own event calendar. All within one Hubzilla channel.
Hubzilla isn’t even new. It isn’t someone’s recent brain-child. It has been developed for 14 years now, longer than Mastodon. And it is still under active development. That doesn’t even mean small patches every few months. Rather, it means that the devs actually keep whipping up new features and/or greatly improving existing features. And that says nothing about the third-party add-ons and themes which slowly get more and more, too.
I’m no expert, and I just now did quick research into hubzilla, but it looks like a fine option.
- MIT licensed FOSS, repo on gitlab, recently updated
- good for blogs and any size group of people in a social network
- supports activity pub, so connects to pleroma, friendica, mastodon, etc…
Yeah, good stuff. I also wonder why we don’t hear more about this?
I also wonder why we don’t hear more about this?
I guess that’s because most information about the non-Threadiverse Fediverse comes into Lemmy via Mastodon. And next to nobody on Mastodon knows that Hubzilla exists, much less what it can do.
Maybe because, at least in my experience, Hubzilla seems mainly used by grumpy old right wing bastards and European Nazis.
Ohhhhnoooo, really? Crap!
Maybe it’stime to make it be associated even more with good people then!
Oh it didn’t occur to me to check it on gitlab! I was afraid of being abandoned or something but it seems it’s active and seems a good one. Hopefully more people discovers it since I think it deserves more attention!
The source code is actually on Framagit.
Ignore the creation dates; Hubzilla is much older than that.
I have experimented with microblog.pub in the past. It’s easy to set up, and federation worked just fine for me.
I’ve been playing with Emissary and having exactly the thought about that as GeoCities. No official instance or anything yet, but it seems to allow you to do just that. Has a WYSIWYG builder or HTML and CSS or markdown. Ben Pate, creator of Emissary, created bandwagon.FM with it.
I put out a similar question a few months ago. For me, it’s getting an old multiuser blog off Wordpress.
I had a lot of good feedback that I’m still trying to collate, so I recommend you pour over the responses and crossposts for the full picture. As others have said here, though — despite the steep learning curve, Hubzilla looks really interesting.
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